America is a country that has been skating for ages on its unparalleled ability to look marvelous on the outside.

Obviously the commercial news media tries to get you worked up and terrified so you'll buy products that they're advertising.

In a pure capitalist system, an institution as moronic and corrupt as Bank of America would be swiftly punished by the market - the executives would get to loot their own firms once, then they'd be looking for jobs again.

What the mortgage bubble was all about was big banks like Goldman Sachs taking big bundles of subprime mortgages that were lent out largely to low-income, highly risky borrowers, and applying this kind of magic-pixie-dust math to these bundles of securities and slapping AAA ratings on them.

The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending - with the exception of the money spent on them.

An unregulated derivatives market essentially gives Wall Street a way to place hidden taxes on everything in the world.

Comparing your family budget to the sovereign debt of the United States is a little like comparing two kindergartners tossing a paper airplane to the Apollo 11 mission.